CVE-2019-19905

Publication date 19 December 2019

Last updated 26 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

NetHack 3.6.x before 3.6.4 is prone to a buffer overflow vulnerability when reading very long lines from configuration files. This affects systems that have NetHack installed suid/sgid, and shared systems that allow users to upload their own configuration files.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
nethack	26.04 LTS resolute	Not affected
	25.10 questing	Not affected
	25.04 plucky	Not affected
	24.10 oracular	Not affected
	24.04 LTS noble	Not affected
	23.10 mantic	Not affected
	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	21.10 impish	Not affected
	21.04 hirsute	Not affected
	20.10 groovy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Vulnerable
	19.10 eoan	Ignored end of life
	19.04 disco	Ignored end of life
	18.04 LTS bionic	Vulnerable
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release

Notes

sbeattie

escalates to group games

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
nethack	Upstream: f4a840a Upstream: f001de7

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version: CVSS v3.0

Base score 9.8 · Critical

Base metrics

Parameter	Value
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality impact	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High

Scores

Parameter	Value
Base score	9.8 · Critical
Exploitability score	-
Impact score	-

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H